The past two days saw me taking my research off to a wider audience via the Health Protection Agency annual conference which was held at the Warwick Arts Centre, located at my own University; very handy for me logistics wise…!
I had a great time, engaging in great discussions via Twitter – taking a guess at using #HPA2012 as a hashtag, as there was no official one being flagged up to start…I’m quite new to Twitter, so not sure if this is standard….but we got there in the end, and I made some wonderful contacts leading to very engaging face-to-face chats. A perfect blend of Social Media and Conference opportunity.
My Poster – The Potential Role of Technology to Improve Hand Hygiene Auditing and prevent Hospital Acquired Gastrointestinal Infections – can be seen here – and is a rather whirlwind tour of my PhD research from start to (almost) finish, with an angle focus on Clostridium Difficile (C.difficile), as the particular stream I was engaging with for this conference was Gastrointestinal Infection – however the PhD itself is not necessarily only focussing on the link between Hand Hygiene and C.difficile as a justification for the importance of the former.
Great interest was shown in all aspects of the work, with different people honing in on different aspects – some on the actual technology examples themselves, others on the topic of auditing as a whole, and many being particularly interested in the concept of “splitting” the “5 Moments” into different behavioural categories; Inherent and Elective. This latter topic, the focus of my future work, is also featuring more heavily on my next poster, now ready for the Infection Prevention Society (IPS) conference at the beginning of October – and I am looking forward immensely to gathering more views and thoughts during those few days. And before then, it’s back to data collection and analysis…!
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